Those people who have witnessed my rants about uber-expensive audiophoolishness and addons in general, will recognize how painful this post is for me.
On a whim I bought this power cable for my monoblocks -
It seems to make a difference. I am not fluent enough in audio speak to describe the difference, other than to say the music seems to have more presence and seems to be more dynamic.
I may be fooling myself, but the price is right if anyone wants to try it for themselves. Also, they look bitchin’.
Yeah, don’t care. I think, mostly I bought them because the price was right and I liked the looks. The potential self-delusion is just an extra bonus.
As a DAC only (putting aside headphone amp), iFi still rate the iDAC2 as their 2nd best DAC in their entire lineup… and I agree with them. I’ve either owned or home demo’ed the entire lineup
Keep enjoying it. It’s very good. It does perform better with a quality USB source but you have that covered with the iUSB3.0 already.
I can’t remember if I asked you before - but can you demo the Pro iDSD at home for 30 days, risk free?
If you wait a few more weeks for the MQA firmware update (and any other bug fixes that come with it, not that I have seen any bugs at my end) then you should be able to home demo the full 30 days with MQA (if that interests you) and any fixes that may come with that update.
Depending on how your power and signal cables are organized, it could be simply because signal cables are taking up less interference because of the shielded power cable. For example, replacing the Schiit-provided power cable for my Lyr-3 by a shielded Shunyata cable I had got rid of a slight hum at high gain. Power cables radiate not just at AC frequencies (50-60Hz depending on country) but also higher frequencies from other causes, such as switching power supplies, electric motors, …
An alternative to pricier cables is to carefully separate power and signal cables, but sometimes that is not so easy to achieve. For the Lyr-3, I ended up with Shunyata cable and a separator to keep the power cable away from the incoming analog RCA cables. Dead quiet now.
Thanks for mentioning that! I own the iDAC2 and have always been curious about those comments from iFi vs the idea that the Black Label at DSD512 measures far better. Switching to DSD512 would likely require an upgrade, and possibly introduce issues, and I’m not trying to measure anything anyway (or spend any money!) I’ve only got about 5k in my little system so I feel the price/performance level of the iDAC2 is a good match.
I have the pre-cursor to the BL iDSD, the iDSD. I can’t keep the bloody battery charged, even tho it’s always plugged in. Playing DSD512 runs it down in about 1/2 hour. Real pain in the ass.
Hahaha. Yeah the fact that I only do 2ch stereo and no headphones sealed the deal for me. I’m eyeing the Pro as well but I know it would start a whole new upgrade cycle all the way to speakers and amp so I am holding out for now!
… 
